


In My Mess

by jperalta



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 07:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14351184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jperalta/pseuds/jperalta
Summary: Josh gets increasingly more upset with himself as his PTSD sparks up and causes him to spiral out of control.





	In My Mess

Everyone was at the party - everything was okay. The music was loud, the drinks were strong, and everyone’s cheeks seemed to be a bit pink. Just when the band was about to reach a crescendo, something exploded loudly overhead. It was probably some sort of light, like a disco ball or one of those fluorescent lights, but whatever it was affected the rest of the lighting. For a few seconds, everything went black, then the lights flickered and came back on. During the moments this had happened, the crowd had collectively fallen to the floor. After all, an assassination attempt had recently taken place, and everyone was still a bit jumpy, while pretending they had moved on. When the lights returned, everyone stood up, laughed nervously, and made their own paths to the nearest bar. Someone stepped up to the microphone, made some joke about the White House electricity, and made sure that everyone was okay.

In a back corner, unable to hear the speaker or comprehend most of his senses, Josh was a few seconds away from falling onto the ground. He attempted to reach out for something, unsure of what was around him or what it was that he really needed, and upon feeling nothing but the thick air, he began to tumble downward. He knew he needed something or someone, and he wanted to ask for it. In fact, he wanted to scream, but all he could manage to do was lift up his arm slightly before noticing that his vision was blurred and his joints were all quivering. He could hardly feel the wall against his back and the floor on his legs. He tried to look for someone to help but all he could see was blurry images, and all he could feel was static.

In the opposite corner of the ballroom, Donna was becoming a bit frantic. “Josh?” She began to call out for him. “Has anyone seen Josh?” The people around her began to turn around and whispered to each other that they thought the man had said everything was fine. But Donna began running from person to person asking if they had seen Josh.

Amy reached out and grabbed ahold of Donna’s arm. “What’s wrong? Why are you looking for him?” She sounded concerned but also a bit annoyed that Donna was making somewhat of a fuss over seemingly nothing - just a loud bang and some flashes.

Donna opened her mouth to speak, but at the same moment Leo nearly crashed into the pair of them. “Are you looking for Josh?” He asked with a gasp. Donna responded that she was. Leo said he had thought he had seen Josh in the opposite corner not too long ago, and the two of them began to move quickly in that direction. 

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Amy asked. They both stopped, then Leo told Donna to keep going.

“Okay, I’ll tell you so you can stop asking,” Amy stood in front of him, a bit shocked but mostly frustrated that everyone had been ignoring her. “Josh was shot last year.”

“I know that,” Amy responded. “Everybody in this room knows it and most people out of this room know that. It was all over the news.”

“Okay, but did you also know that after he came back, he started acting strange, and a lot of people here were concerned for him. He started yelling a lot, and cursing even more, and even raised his voice to the president at one occasion.”

“I didn’t know that,” Amy stated, then somewhat more quietly she said, “he never told me anything. He never talks to me about it.”

“Well after that incident, we brought in a man from ATVA, and after working with Josh for a bit, he had him diagnosed as having PTSD.”

Amy was even more quiet then. She had never known anyone who had PTSD, and she didn’t entirely understand what that meant. 

“Obviously Donna was with him a lot, and she knows the things that tend to set off episodes, or panic attacks - things like flashing lights and loud sounds. She wants to see if he’s okay.”

“And that’s it?” Amy asked. She didn’t understand what the big deal was or why people were acting like Josh had been shot again. Leo was a bit taken aback by this response that had seemed so cold, so he let the conversation drop and went off to find Josh himself.

As the rest of the party continued, Donna and Leo made their way to the back corner. They came up to a small horseshoe of people facing towards the corner, and Donna pushed her way through. On the other side of the wall of people she found Josh on the floor, limbs shaking as he took in quick bursts of air. Donna fell to his side while she opened her purse and began rummaging around for a bottle of pills. Leo asked everyone to clear the area if they could or at least turn away to give Josh some privacy. 

“Josh, can you hear me?” Donna asked as calmly as she could manage. Josh nodded his head a bit. “I’m going to give you one of your pills. This is going to be over soon.”

Josh was hardly audible when he whispered that he thought he was dying. Donna shared a look with Leo, who handed Donna a bottle of water. 

“I know that’s how you feel, but you’re not dying. This will be over soon.” She handed Josh a pill and helped him swallow it with the water. Then she put everything down and put her hands on his. “Josh, just try to slow your breathing. Your body will catch up with your mind. Squeeze my hands if you want to.” He clasped her hands in his own and put all his attention into slowing his breathing. “It’s going to be okay. It’ll end soon.” Josh continued to shake for about ten minutes more before the panic attack began to subside and the medication took effect. By the time it was over, there was almost no one left in the area except for the two of them plus Leo and Amy. 

***

The next night, Josh was lying in Amy’s bed, frantically emailing from his phone while Amy did the same from her computer in the kitchen. After a prolonged silence, Josh walked over to her. 

“Amy…” She kept typing. They had hardly spoken since he had come over earlier. He had been wanting to talk about what happened, to try to explain it to her, but as soon as he had come in she began typing on her laptop, seemingly with a purpose, so he had taken a nap. They hadn’t spoken about what had happened the night before yet. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to, but he knew that if this was going to be a part of his life, then he should share it with the person he was with. 

“Amy, can you stop for a minute? I walk to talk to you about last night.”

“We don’t have to talk,” she said abruptly, not even looking away from her computer as she spoke. 

Josh began to feel nervous, that maybe she wouldn’t understand, or maybe she was angry that Donna had known exactly what to do. He liked Amy a lot and he didn’t want to lose her because of his own nervous system. 

“I know we don’t,” he said quietly as he began to fidget with his hands and pick at the scar on his palm. “But could we?”

“We don’t have to.” She said again, not looking up from the computer. 

Josh felt a bit angry at her response, especially since he was trying to have a serious conversation with her about his mental health - something he had never brought up to her before. He reached over her shoulder and closed her laptop.

“Josh, what the fuck?” She spun around in her chair and saw a bit of fear on his face. She knew she had no idea what she was getting into with him. She wanted their relationship to just be this fun side thing she had going on, but something was happening with him and she didn’t know how to handle it.

“I want to talk about it.” He said firmly.

“Well, I don’t.” She turned back around and opened her laptop back up but he just closed it again.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing to say.”

“How is there nothing to say? Do you even know what happened?”

She looked down at the floor. “Look, it doesn’t matter, you freaked out or spazzed or something. That’s fine, that happens I guess.”

Josh was hurt by this. It was starting to seem as if she didn’t care. “That’s… I was having a panic attack, Amy.”

She started picking at her nails. She didn’t really know what that meant and she didn’t think she could learn right at that moment. “Whatever, like I said, you freaked out.”

“Sure, and you just stood there.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s why I want to talk - to let you know what you could do in the future if it happens again, or to explain why it happens”

“It’s not going to happen again.”

“You don’t know that. It probably will.”

“You’re such a pessimist.”

“Amy -”

“Josh, I don’t want to talk about it.” She slammed her hand on the table and there was a long and silent pause after she said that. She used the silence to turn back to face her computer, but she didn’t open it. She just stared at the open space in front of herself. Josh took a step backwards. 

“If that’s how you feel about this, then this isn’t going to work.” He felt his heartbeat began to escalate and noticed his right hand was twitching.

Amy turned to face him and looked him up and down, noticing that he looked as if he was about to leave. “Yeah, it’s obviously not fun anymore.”

Out of all of it, this was the thing she said that hurt him the most. He couldn’t control that his PTSD was flaring up again. He couldn’t control when he did and didn’t have panic attacks. But he also thought that their relationship with each other might be more than just “fun” that happened when they both weren’t working. He had come to really like her, and was starting to wonder what their relationship was. But after she said this, he realized he wasn’t much more to her than just some guy she slept with occasionally and made fun of in public. He also didn’t like the fact that she seemed to be more upset about how his mental health was affecting her instead of showing empathy towards him and his situation. He now felt extremely self-conscious standing in her apartment. 

“Okay,” he said as he looked around to see if he had brought anything else with him, “I’m going to go then.”

“Bye.”

By the time he left her apartment, his heart was racing, and he noticed that both of his hands were shaking. No, not now, he whispered to himself. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pill, and popped it into his mouth. He wanted someone to comfort him, but the person on the other side of the door was unable to. He began to feel extremely ashamed of himself, and while leaning against her door, smacked himself hard in the head. Then there was a moment of silence as he thought of Amy on the other side of the door - listening to him, judging him for doing that. 

He found his way down the flight of stairs leading from her apartment to outside, and when he finally got himself through the last door, he fell onto the stoop. He knew he had to get home, but firstly he had to stop shaking. His gripped his hands tightly together until his knuckles began to turn white and small fingernail shaped crescents began to form in his palms. His long white scar began to throb, and just as his vision was beginning to fade and the streetlights seemed to be dissipating into the sky, his phone went off. He considered not answering it and just wandering aimlessly around Amy’s neighborhood, but then he realized the ringtone going off was the special one set for Donna in case anything important was happening at the office.

“What’s up?” He said to her with an exhale.

“Josh, what’s going on? Your voice sounds shaky.”

“I’m fine,” he said as he took small breaths of cold air. 

“Amy called me.” There was a pause. “She said you guys split and when you left she heard what sounded like a slap and she was worried but didn’t know what to do. Where are you now?”

Josh had a lot of questions, one of them being how frequently Amy and Donna talked about him. 

“Josh? I’m putting on my coat now and a destination would be great.”

“I… I’m still outside of her apartment.”

“Okay, I know where that is. Stay there. Did you take a pill?”

“How did you -”

“I’ll be there in 5.”

She was there in three and a half minutes. He wasn’t sure how, but he didn’t ask. By the time she showed up, his cheeks were pink from the cold and he couldn’t feel his hands. He had forgotten to put on his gloves and his coat was hardly hanging off of his back. Donna walked right over to him and pulled it back over his shoulders.

“Josh, you have to take care of yourself.” Josh was hardly processing anything that was happening. He still felt in a daze as he remained between a state of severe anxiety and the state he would be in once the pill had taken full effect. Everything sort of felt like a disturbing dream, but Donna was there in front of him, so he tried to focus his attention on her.

“Donna…” he began, but his voice trailed off before he could say anything, and he wasn’t sure that he had even planned to say anything. 

“Just be quiet,” she said as she pulled his gloves out of his pockets and shoved them onto his trembling hands. “We’re gonna get you home.” She noticed a few tears forming in his eyes. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

“I just…” his voice was acting as if it was attempting to remember how to form sentences. “I’m so upset. Everything keeps getting ruined because of me.”

“Oh, Josh,” Donna said as he fell towards her. He put his head against her stomach and she pressed her hands onto his back. “It’s not your fault. You’re doing all you can.” Josh wrapped his arms around her torso and let a few of the tears fall onto her jacket. “You’re gonna get through this,” she whispered. He grabbed her tighter as his cheeks and hands warmed up.

***

Back at Josh’s place, he was helped by Donna up the stairs and through the door. His shaking had subsided but he was now physically weak. His eyes could hardly stay open and his legs felt like static was pulsing through them. His fingers were still jittery and no matter how hard he tried to walk in a straight line, he couldn’t. Finally, he was able to collapse onto his bed, and when he did, he couldn’t help the few tears that rolled out onto his cheeks. 

“Josh, it’s going to be okay.” Donna said, brushing the tears away. Her hand was warm on his still-cold cheek and he didn’t want her to leave. 

“I’m really sorry you know me,” he said, turning his hand to the side and shoving his face into a pillow. 

“I - why would you say that? You’re one of the best people I know.” She took the pillow off of his face and put it under his head. “You’re just going through a bit of a hard time, but that doesn’t make knowing you any less wonderful.”

He closed his eyes and the remaining tears dripped from his eyelids. “I’m just so scared to keep living.”

Donna didn’t know what to say anymore. She looked around his room and saw how unclean it was. There were opened bottles of prescription pills and half empty beer cans scattered around the whole room. She stood up and put the caps back on a few bottles and gathered a few cans into the recycling in the kitchen. She halted for a moment in front of the fridge and upon opening it, didn’t see much inside. She thought he had been looking thinner lately. She saw the dishes piled up in the sink, and started to wonder if he had stopped going to therapy. She’d talk to him about that later, but for now she just walked back into his bedroom. She sat back on the bed and looked at him, lying down with the backs of his hands over his eyes and his chest rising up and down as he attempted to get full breaths into his chest. She remembered him saying he was scared to live, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave him alone.

“Josh,” she began gently, “would you mind if I slept here tonight? I can just sleep on the sofa. It would just make it easier to get to work tomorrow.”

He removed his hands from his face. “You want to sleep here? In my mess?”

She took his hand in hers. “Is that okay?”

He smiled for the first time in a few days. “Yeah, of course.”


End file.
